Bidirectional applications are applications that support the Arabic and Hebrew languages. By nature, bidirectional applications have to be sensitive, to some extent, to the fact that their text data is bidirectional (contains embedded LtR and RtL segments).
In this context there are two types of applications:
These applications are written specifically to be used by Arabic and Hebrew-speaking users. These applications are aware of the fact that the text being processed is bidirectional, and take steps to ensure the correct processing of this text. Bidi-aware applications make active use of the PM bidirectional support APIs.
Bidi-Unaware applications do not have any knowledge about the fact that the text they handle/process is bidirectional. Usually, these applications are developed for users of a Left-To-Right language (such as English or French), and thus they do not perform any special handling of bidirectional text. Such applications do not make explicit calls to the PM APIs for bidirectional support.